Social Android Imaging: Samsung's Galaxy Camera

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User Experience

Since the Galaxy Camera is running on Android 4.1, the camera has nearly instant on functionality, similar to your smartphone or tablet but with a slight delay while the lens opens. When you turn on the camera, it will go straight into camera mode. To switch to the main Android home screen, press the Home icon in the upper left corner of the screen.

The Galaxy Camera has three home screens by default. You can add additional pages for up to seven home screens. When navigating the home screens, you’ll find the traditional Back, Home, and Menu buttons located on the right edge of the screen.

With the Galaxy Camera, you basically trade the talk capabilities on a full-featured smartphone for enhanced camera functionality. Since the camera has built-in LTE connectivity that operates on the Verizon Wireless network, you'll need to pay a monthly data fee just like you do with your cell phone. The good news is that Verizon Wireless offers special plans for connected devices such as the Galaxy Camera, assuming you already have cell phone service with the company. Depending on your current cell phone plan, you may be able to add service for the Galaxy Camera for as little as $5 per month.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera offers three primary shooting modes: Auto, Smart, and Expert. With Auto, the camera takes care of all settings. In Smart mode, you get to choose from a list of 15 different shooting modes which include Beauty Face, Best Photo, Continuous Shot, Best Face, Landscape, Macro, Action Freeze, Rich Tone, Panorama, Waterfall, Silhouette, Sunset, Night, Fireworks, and Light Trace. Expert mode gives you full manual controls with the ability to change the brightness, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.

While shooting in automatic mode in a dimly lit environment, you’ll want to remember to pop up the flash so the camera can use the flash if necessary. In other words, if the camera is in auto-flash mode, it won’t activate the flash unless it’s already popped up.

Unlike many of the popular smartphones we’ve tested recently, the Samsung Galaxy Camera does not come with Swype preinstalled. If you’re used to using this keyboard on your smartphone, you may miss this feature when trying to send a picture to a friend via email.

Because the Galaxy Camera runs on Android, you can download and install apps from the Google Play Store, thereby enabling you to use the Galaxy Camera as more than just a camera. Some of the apps that come preinstalled on the Galaxy Camera include Dropbox, Instagram, Paper Artist, Photo Wizard, S Suggest, and S Voice. The Galaxy Camera also has many of the standard Android widgets as well as a Camera widget and more.